The ECHO Coordinating Center is pleased to announce that the NIH ECHO Program Office selected 12 investigators to receive research funding through the ECHO Opportunities and Innovation Fund (OIF).
The OIF is an NIH-funded grant mechanism to support early career investigators who propose projects that introduce new research, tools, and technologies to the ECHO Program. Each OIF investigator is sponsored by an ECHO award.
For this OIF round, NIH requested proposals focusing on the following areas:
- ECHO Cycle 2 Scientific Priorities defined by the ECHO Steering Committee
- Aim for discoveries that are directly related to preventing diseases and promoting health
- Identify how and why children’s health changes over time, which could lead to early detection of diseases
- Identify protective or risk factors that change how early environmental or genetic factors influence child health
- Identify periods of development most sensitive to specific beneficial or harmful exposures
- Rapidly design studies in response to unexpected events or health innovations that affect child health
- The Science of Operations, specifically:
- Refinement of measures
- Return of individual research results
- Recruitment and retention strategies
Congratulations to the awardees! See below for the full list of awardees and their research proposal titles.
- Yaray Agosto, PhD, MPH – Santos Award, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Identifying Disability Type, Functional Limitations, and Obesity Risk Among ECHO Children - Jessica Arizaga, PhD – Coordinating Center Award, University of California, San Francisco
Redefining Early Childhood ACEs in the ECHO Cohort - Catrina Calub, PhD – Hertz-Picciotto Award, University of California, Davis
Identifying Greenspace Features that Promote Adolescent Mental Health and Cognition - Catherine Cohen, PhD, RDN – Dabelea Award, University of Colorado Denver
Added Sugar Exposures in Early Life in Relation to Childhood Obesity Risk - Heather Guetterman, MS, PhD, RD – Aguiar Award, Michigan State University
Improving the Characterization of Prenatal Intake of Supplemental Micronutrients for Optimal Birth Outcomes - Yu Ni, PhD – Karr Award, San Diego State University Research Foundation
Chronic Transportation Noise Exposure and Blood Pressure in ECHO Children - Miriam Novack, PhD – Measurement Core Award, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine
From Lab to Livingroom: Remote Adaptation of the NIH Baby Toolbox for Infant Assessment - Adam Pedersen, PhD – Kerver Award, Wayne State University
Nontargeted Bioinformatics Approaches to Identify Associations Between Emerging Pollutants and Maternal Metabolic Pathways and Early Life Growth - Mengyuan Ren, PhD – Dunlop Award, Emory University
Prenatal Air Pollution and Newborn Neurodevelopment across ECHO cohorts (PANDA-ECHO) - Ana Rosen Vollmar, PhD – Ferrara Award, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Division of Research
Wildfire Smoke Exposure and Child Cardiovascular Health - David Sosnowski, PhD – Lyall Award, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Interaction Between Genetic Risk for Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Childhood Adversity Predicting Childhood Behavior Outcomes - Danielle Stevens, PhD – Hunt Award, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Corrected Age in Practice: Identifying At-Risk Preterm Children Through Multivariate Growth Modeling